


Smells Like Laundry Detergent and Hormones

by hipster-yams (madamedicelia)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Drabble, M/M, also this was a hc prompt, idek man, love these nerds, so awkward but so cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-09
Updated: 2016-01-09
Packaged: 2018-05-12 16:58:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,785
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5673604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madamedicelia/pseuds/hipster-yams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Yaku tries to correctly launder his delicates when he meets the tall (attractive) nerd he's seen around campus (okay, maybe he tried to run into him often) (what? he's pretty).</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smells Like Laundry Detergent and Hormones

**Author's Note:**

> lol what am i do
> 
> i just really love these nerds and wanted to write a lil about them
> 
> BLESS MY BETA THE ULTIMATE [MEMELORD](http://hipster-yams.tumblr.com/post/136923261325/a-collection-of-memed-on-typos-in-my-fix-brought)

“I have no idea how to work this washing machine, can you help me?“

Yaku looked up from his knitting. That tall kid he’s seen around the dorm and campus stood in front of the row of washing machines holding one of those collapsible fabric hampers full of clothes. Yaku has only caught glimpse of him but, now with him standing in front of him, shuffling his feet, Yaku got a good look and his suspicions were confirmed. His silver hair floated around his face, the straight strands somehow staying together in a way Yaku could never get his own hair to do. His thin eyebrows pinched together with worry and his narrow green eyes sparkled with hope. Yaku took a deep breath. _Yep, he’s attractive. Fuck._

“Yeah, sure,” Yaku replied, setting down his yarn and needles. _Gotta keep cool, Morisuke, you can do this. It’s not like you’ve never seen a hot guy before._ He pointed to the different buttons on the machine. “This is water temperature and this is time. Your detergent and stuff goes in here.”

The silver-haired man nodded enthusiastically, relief written across his face. “Thank you!”

Yaku reclined his head and returned to his seat. _If I don’t look at him, I can ignore him and his soft, fluffy looking hair and his smooth, pale skin and – Shit, shut up brain._

Focusing on his knitting, Yaku carefully looped the yarn in the pattern he had chosen. _Knit one, pearl two._ He often knitted to past time while waiting. Most people just dumped their shit in a machine and ran, unaware and uncaring to whatever happens to it in the meantime. Yaku had had way too many incidents where people took his clothes out of the machine and left it on top. This wouldn’t be so bad if his clothes were dry but they removed his garments sopping wet from the washing machine and to boot it, usually forgot one sock. Yaku had so many incomplete pairs of socks due to inattentive college students. Rest in pieces wherever they’ve gone.

“My name’s Lev by the way; Haiba Lev.” The tall man leaned up from tossing his clothes into the machine. More like he unrolled like a fruit roll up because, damn, this boy was tall. 

Yaku chewed on his lip. Conversation was not in his plan. Not wanting to be impolite, however, he responded, “Yaku Morisuke.” He glanced at the pile of dirty clothes and furrowed his eyebrows. “Hey, you aren’t going to put your whites in with your dark clothes, are you?” 

Lev looked confused at his laundry. “Yes?”

Yaku scoffed. _Amateur. Why do most college kids not know how to do their damn laundry?_ “You have to separate them, Haiba-san,” Yaku explained with an eye roll. 

Lev made a face but nodded. “Call me Lev; Haiba-san is way too formal,” he added.

“Lev,” Yaku tasted the name, feeling the slide of his tongue and movement of his lips around the sounds. 

Lev grinned. He leaned down, poking his head nearly entirely into the washing machine drum to extract his white clothes and chuck them into the adjacent machine. He was wearing mismatched red and black patterned socks, a well-worn band shirt, and black shorts, which rode up his thighs as he crouched. 

_His thighs are #thicc, wow; he must work out._ Yaku thought and felt embarrassment creep up his neck. _Oh my god, brain, no. This is so not the time. Also fuck Kuroo for brainwashing me with stupid memes._ He glared at his matte grey needles and knitted and pearled furiously, the red yarn unrolling violently. 

He heard Lev slam the doors closed and pour in the soap. The button beeped multiple times as he adjusted the settings. _Oh, thank the gods; he’ll leave now and I don’t have to deal with his all too aesthetically pleasing face._

“Uhm, Yaku-san, the machine isn’t going,” Lev blurted. 

Morisuke turned around. Lev pulled and twisted his hands around themselves. He bit his lip and Yaku tried to inhale as discretely as possible. 

“You have to swipe for it,” he stuttered. He cleared his throat and continued with more vocal stability, “Swipe your ID on this thing and punch in the washer number.” He gestured to the small back box mounted to the wall next to him.

Lev gasped in delight and rummaged around his pockets for his ID card. _He’s like a puppy._ Yaku shook his head with a small smile. While Lev was typing in his washers, a beeping resounded in the little underground room. Lev looked around with comical terror.

“I haven’t even done anything yet!” he exclaimed.

Yaku waved at him. “Hush, it’s just my stuff that’s finished.” He gently picked up his knitting supplies and set them on top of an empty dryer. After clearing the lint filter, he moved his clean, wet clothes into the machine. He plucked out a few dryer sheets from his box and dropped them in before slamming the door. He marched up to the card machine and raised his eyebrows at Lev.

“Ah, just a sec, Yaku-san.” Lev fiddled around with the keys until his machines started beeping as well. He stepped away with a grand gesture. “All yours.”

Yaku laughed a thanks and swiped his card. _Only 550.53 yen left._ Yaku scowled at the numbers. Fucking college student stereotype was not wrong; we are literally all broke as fuck. After starting his machine, he leaped up butt first onto it. He smiled. It was warm and like a massage while he finished his project. In addition, no one would try to open them while he was around. 

“So whatcha making?” Lev inquired. He looked at Yaku with curious eyes, trying to figure out what the lump of yarn was. 

_Yep there goes any hope of him leaving,_ Yaku thought with a mix of annoyance and joy. _Just fuck off already, stop fueling my crush._ He held up his needles. “It’s gonna be a beanie,” he answered.

“That’s so cool! That’s such a neat hobby to have; I wish I could make things,” he said with blatant honesty and amazement. He chuckled nervously. “I’m kind of too clumsy to deal with delicate things, plus I’m not very arty.”

Yaku frowned. “There’s no such thing as not arty enough; ‘arty’ is a learned talent. I didn’t op out of the womb a knitting master. It takes practice and a lot of fucking up like anything else.” 

Lev stepped closer to admire Yaku’s handiwork. “That sounds so wise,” he observed. 

Yaku snorted. “Any crackpot can spout advice. It’s the following it part that’s hard.”

“I’ll try my best,” he announced with a determined smile. “Huh, with you sitting up there I don’t have to look down to talk to you.”

Morisuke felt his eyebrow twitch. “You calling me short?” he asked with a deathly calm tone. 

“Well, yeah.” Lev canted his head to the side. “I’m not wrong.”

Yaku puffed out his chest like a bird and scoffed. He slapped Lev upside the head, not hard enough to hurt but just enough to muss his hair. That amount of force was apparently enough to Yaku to physically confirm that, yes, his hair was as soft as it looked. “Don’t be rude to your senpai,” Yaku chided. 

Lev ducked and covered his head with his hands. He backed away but a mischievous smile spread on his lips. “I’m only stating a fact, Yaku-san. It’s not a secret,” he explained, ending with a giggle. 

Yaku opened his mouth to retort but stopped once his brain had processed Lev’s laugh. It was light but not quite airy; it resounded deep, like an honestly amused chuckle. It was eumoirous. It made Yaku’s breath catch and his heart beat a little harder and pink sneak across his cheeks. “Whatever,” he mumbled, turning away. 

Lev mimped and Yaku screamed internally. _Stop being so goddamn cute, I can’t contain all these gay feelings,_ he yelled mentally. 

“I didn’t mean to offend you, Yaku-san,” Lev admitted. “I’m sorry.”

_No, stop that, you’re not allowed to be cute_ and _nice._ “It’s nothing,” Morisuke asserted.

Lev brightened up. “So what’s your major?” he asked. 

“Literature, specifically Japanese and English,” he replied. “You?”

“Really? I’m majoring in Russian studies. I’m in a lit class this semester.” Lev pointed his thumb at himself. “I’m half Russian and I really wanted to learn more about that side of me. Why’d you pick Japanese and English lit?”

Yaku leaned back on his hands, feeling the warmth of the machine as it rumbled. “I like reading. Words convey so much meaning and it’s one of the few things that survives the longest after someone dies. I want to know what they thought while they were alive.”

“You seem to have your life a lot more planned out and logical than me,” Lev remarked with a smile. 

Yaku barked out a laugh. “It only looks like that, trust me.”

Lev cocked his head to the side. He looked like an innocent puppy. “Do you know what else you look like?” he queried.

_I swear to every deity out there if you say short._ “What?” Yaku asked cautiously.

With a completely serious and honest tone, Lev replied, “Cute.”

“I am not cute, I am full of rage and I will fight you.” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Morisuke regretted them. Usually Kuroo teasingly called him “cute” and that was Yaku’s go-to response. However, this was not Kuroo and this was not meant as an insult. Yaku sucked in a deep breath as if he could inhale the words back in from the atmosphere. 

Lev looked taken aback but quickly recovered. He stepped back and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “I’m not wrong,” he admitted. 

Yaku opened his mouth to reply, to say anything to ignore the heat creeping across his cheeks. Lev stepped back, twisting his hands together, a matching pink flushing his face. 

“Uh, I have to go, uh, do a thing,” he stammered before running out. Morisuke heard the door swish closed and hurried footsteps up the upstairs. 

Yaku dropped his head into his hands and groaned loudly. _The_ one _chance I get with the guy I like and I completely blow it. It probably took so much courage to say that, too, and I ruined it._ He laid down on the tops of the driers, feeling them wobble and shake. His knitting lay abandoned on the chair. His blush was almost as warm as the heat rising from the machines. He laid there thinking and regretting his life choices for who knows how long. _I could go after him and try to talk to him,_ he thought. _Wait, I don’t even know where he lives. Well, it’s got be in this building…_ Yaku shook his head, feeling the static electricity grow from rubbing his hair into the metal. _I am not knocking on everyone’s door to find Lev; I am not that desperate. I hope..._ He was seriously contemplating knocking on everyone’s door or at least asking Kuroo if he knew where Lev lived when Kenma slumped in. Yaku bit his bottom lip to keep from outright whining. 

“What’d you do to Lev?” Kenma sighed as he opened a drier and cleared out the lint catcher. “He’s pacing a hole in the carpet of our dorm.”

Yaku let out another long moan of annoyance and dragged his hands down his face. “He called me cute and I told him I’d fight him,” he said, voice muffled by his palms.

Kenma raised his eyebrows and deadpanned, “Smooth move.”

“Ugh, I know,” Yaku complained. He parted his fingers so he could see Kenma’s badly bleached hair bobbing around as he moved his wet clothes into the machine. “Can I fix it, ya think?”

Kenma pursed his lips but didn’t stop his actions. Yaku waited in growing anticipation as Kenma continued to transfer the sopping clothes into the drier. He set the controls and paid for it. By the time Kenma was punching in the number of the drier into the card-swipe machine, he was sitting upright, worrying his hands together and his leg shaking. Once Kenma had finished setting up, he turned to Yaku who had bit his chapped lip so much he had pealed away a thin layer of skin and it was bleeding. 

“So?” he asked, bracing himself. _This wasn’t even worth the amount of worrying and anxiety but Kenma was being an ass and creating this stupid amount of suspense._

Kenma stared into Yaku’s eyes with his own narrow, hazel ones. He felt the blond’s gaze penetrate his soul and see all his thoughts. “He really likes you,” Kenma admitted finally. “He has to come down for his clothes eventually; he’s out of underwear.”

Yaku exhaled in relief. _Time to start practicing an apology._

Kenma was half out the door when he turned back and pinned Yaku with that all-knowing look of his. “Be nice to him; it took him a long time to work up the courage to say that.” With that, he quietly padded away. 

Yaku slowly lowered himself back down onto the driers. The machine had stopped moving and was cooling down; his clothes were finished. There was no way he could leave and miss Lev though. He peered at Lev’s machines. They read fifteen minutes left. 

Morisuke starting going over the words in his head, using his hands to emphasize his point though no one was around. _”Look, I’m sorry for being an asshole. I actually think you’re really hot.” Oh my god, too blunt, Morisuke, get some eloquence. “I’m sorry about what I said, it’s just Kuroo-“ I refuse to bring that trash into this conversation._ He went through all sort of variations and tones, trying to find the perfect one but each fell short. 

A sudden shuffling of socks on the laminate flooring threw Yaku out of his thoughts. Lev was waiting in the doorway, eyeballing his machines but refusing to look at Yaku or even acknowledge his presence. 

Morisuke bolted upright, practically slipping off the drier. “Lev, I’m-“

Lev waved his hand frantically. “No, no, I’m sorry for being so forward. That was really impolite of me. I just thought…” He trailed off, running a hand through his hair. The silver strands flowed through his fingers like water, settling naturally back into place.

Yaku hopped up the machine and walked up to Lev. He looked up into his worried emerald eyes. His eyelashes were pale and feathery. “No, you did nothing wrong. I was being an ass and I’m sorry,” Yaku confessed. He hadn’t practiced this phrasing but it finally fit. 

Lev’s eyebrows rounded out and up with joy and relief. The wrinkles between them shrank away and instead appeared as a smile around his eyes. His eyes flickered around Yaku’s face, taking in the honesty. 

“So, uhm?” he asked with pure, unadulterated eloquence. “Does that mean you like me?”

Yaku smacked him on the side of his arm. “Stop that, you look like a puppy and it’s too cute for me to handle,” Morisuke scolded lightly. “And yes, I do,” he added quietly. Somehow it didn’t seem like Lev was one to take a hint; Yaku needed to practically write it out for him. 

Lev grinned and Yaku felt his little heart rise with his smile and it grow warm like his blush. _So how do I do this,_ his brain asked quietly. Yaku stood on his tiptoes and rested his palms on Lev’s shoulders. He felt Lev put his hands lightly on his waist. He felt them settle unsurely as if Lev had never done this before. 

“You have to lean down, you big nerd,” Yaku quipped gently. His smile ruined any mal effect the words could bring. 

Lev licked his lips and leaned closer to Yaku’s level. Morisuke felt his eyes slide close and a warm breath on his lips. Lev was fumbling even at this distance. Yaku reached up and pulled his face to his own, mashing their lips together. There was too much pressure and their lips were in the wrong place. Lev gasped against Yaku’s mouth. His breath tasted sweet and gentle. Yaku felt a giggle bubbling up. _What a place to be kissing. But who fucking cares because this is amazing._ He pulled back with a quiet smack and suck. Lev was holding his breath, as if he was trying to preserve the moment, and his half-lidded eyes had a shiny, glazed look on them.

“Don’t look so forlorn; there’s a lot more where that came from,” Yaku whispered to both their giggles.

**Author's Note:**

> : ^ )
> 
> hmu on tumblr @hipster-yams


End file.
